I took myself by the scruff of the neck and went rather light-headedly to bed.
The next morning I rented a bike with a trailer and pedalled off into the countryside with Charlie. We sang for the fields and the sea, and after fifteen kilometres we stopped at a little ice-cream kiosk and were gloriously on holiday. This is our trip to Bornholm, I thought to myself. This is what it looks like. Maybe I had sat there like Charlie with my own father once. Maybe.
When we got back to the Gæstgivergaarden the chairs outside were draped with bathing towels and the golden light of evening accentuated everyone’s rosy cheeks. The band had declared a party after the gig and a number of guests were wearing white. Suste was affectionate, she wanted rum and Coke and to sit on Lars’ lap. What Lars wanted was not immediately obvious.
People were dancing in the courtyard and Suste was inventing some new steps in front of the stage. Lars was still sitting where he was before. He hadn’t moved.
‘Where did you two meet?’ I asked.
It was the sort of question that usually got people talking.
‘Musikcaféen, Thursday the fourteenth of March 1991. A Sko/Torp gig. They’d had that hit.’
‘And there she was all of a sudden at the bar, or what?’
‘No, she was right in the middle of the crowd.’
I waited, but nothing more was forthcoming.
Suste lived with his silence every day. Their friends probably thought of him as down to earth, deep even, because he never opened his mouth, but I was done hailing the mute. Maybe he was shy. If he was, he could do something about it. Or maybe he just didn’t have anything to say, in which case his unwarranted points would have to be deducted.
I missed Diana dreadfully. It wasn’t our style to call and kiss goodnight, which was fine by me, but on the other hand it seemed silly to resist, and so I rang, only to reach her answerphone and hang up without saying anything.
Suste danced over with three Havana Clubs. Of course she had taken salsa lessons. We drank in silence. ‘That’s me for tonight,’ said Lars. ‘I’m turning in. Remember we promised the kids that trip to Brændegårdshaven tomorrow.’
The band were soaking it all up at the after-party, women of all ages hanging on their sideburns, but the lead singer, who called himself King of the Night, had read the piece in Berlingske Tidende and wanted to discuss it with me.
‘I don’t give a toss for your theories, Vallin. You say the Net has altered our psychology, but my friends are going the opposite way. Closing down their Facebook profiles. Chopping firewood and reading poetry.’
‘Where are your friends from?’ I said.
‘I’m from Bistrup, between Holte and Birkerød. Why?’
‘Do you know those people who drive up and down the Strandvejen in vintage cars on a Sunday, with leather driving helmets on? That’s you.’
He couldn’t see the funny side. Maybe he was on coke. Suste was standing next to us, swaying. She had buttoned down her shirt.
‘Your generation are the ones with all the bon viveur shit, Vallin, but it’s all crap. Couples are here to stay. There’s beauty in banality. We want to repeat ourselves. People are happiest with repetition. Think of Buddhist monks.’
‘Have you got any children?’ Suste asked.
‘I’m twenty-fucking-six,’ he said. ‘No kids.’ The latter he delivered in English.
‘Repetition’s good for kids, but it’s not for grown-ups. Trust me!’ said Suste, echoing the linguistic shift.
She downed a Havana Club and poured herself another.
‘That bitch is seriously frustrated,’ said the lead singer.
‘That bitch is going insane,’ said Suste.
‘How come?’
‘Have you got the balls to listen?’
‘Hit me!’ said the lead singer.
‘All I can think about is sex, but I’m not getting any.’
‘I’ve got plenty for everyone,’ said the lead singer.
‘So kiss me,’ said Suste.
The little blue disc on the table began to flash. Our chips were ready. The sun reflected in the swimming pool, off the little steel table and the wet tiles. I went to the counter and collected our tray. Lars was in a black, short-sleeved shirt from the nineties. The kids pounced on the chips. They stank of tired cooking oil and lacked salt.
‘She didn’t come back until after breakfast,’ said Lars.
A waft of chlorine enveloped us. His face was lined.
‘It’s not on. Disappearing like that. It’s exactly what you’re going on about, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Screwing around.’
‘I prefer to talk about exploiting our potential instead of being bored together,’ I said.
He stared out at the water slide.
‘I’d rather just be a decent dad.’
Diana was out and the room was in chaos.
Over by the stereo a messy pile of CDs lay separated from their covers. She had been listening to Motörhead and Elis Regina. Ravel’s Bolero. I put them back and put Bill Evans on, then went over to the washing-up and lifted a plate. There was something black stuck to its edge. I went over to the bin and rummaged through cigarette ends and banana skins. It was down at the bottom. Oscietre Caviar, 50g. Then there were all the empties: one gin, one vodka, a jar of beetroot, a large number of beer bottles and four ginger ales from Naturfrisk. And there, shoulder to shoulder, two bottles of Launois Millesime, much lauded by champagne oracle Richard Juhlin. Lisa and Stig might have been over, but his taste was too poor. This was for connoisseurs.
Who else was in the know?
‘Autumn Leaves’ was full of chase. Bass and piano. Where did he find those notes? Bill Evans can play anything, but finding the notes there, at that exact juncture, was beyond virtuosity. They revealed themselves only to humans who had placed themselves utterly at their disposal.
I was dancing when Diana got home. Teddy bears showered down from the ceiling. Brown teddies, yellow teddies. The big white one.
It didn’t come back together again until I was lying there slobbering her juices.
Nothing is as breathlessly unreal as an open cunt.
TISVILDE, JULY 2008
I cried when I delivered Charlie back to Helene. They were going to Mallorca for three weeks. Deia, naturally. Helene’s safe choice. Tue had started writing again and now Helene could talk about fresh figs in the salad without fear of an argument. I had a clear feeling that Charlie was going to miss me the first week. I said my farewells and headed over to Søren’s, picking up Diana on the way.
The taxi pulled up outside his building in Østerbro at five to eleven. Søren was standing on the pavement with his fishing rod and a tightly packed holdall, smiling faintly. He was putting his best face on, but the way he mumbled a humble hello to Diana revealed just how fully aware he was of how little he had achieved in life. He is quite invincible whenever he approaches that realisation.
‘Camilla White Wine says Mille’s a well-known singer,’ he said.
‘She’s got three Danish grammies,’ I said.
‘She played me one of her CDs. Hangover or something it was called. Does she drink?’
‘Not in the way you’re thinking,’ I said.
‘What’s her music actually like?’ said Diana.
‘How would you describe it, Mikkel?’ said Søren.
He hadn’t the guts himself.
‘Clever pop,’ I said. Søren nodded.
‘Wouldn’t cut any ice at Café Jernstangen, am I right?’
I asked the driver to go through the Grib Skov forest and then as we got closer to Tisvilde suggested we drive along the seafront.
The good weather had drawn out almost every type of potential visitor. The cabriolet crowd had opted for Tisvilde over Mallorca, the advertising boys held their PPMs and brainstorming sessions on the patios and deckings, and the intellectual left stood chatting in front of the fish van where they spent the best part o
f an hour buying thirty-two kroner’s worth of smoked halibut. Then there were all the daytrippers, flocks of gay men cruising at Stængehus, trespassers from the deadly dull summer house areas of Smidstrup and Dronningemølle, families in sweltering hot cars.
It was all still the same. The kiosk was there, wasps hovering around the ice-cream wrappers.
‘This is one of the poshest lanes in town,’ I said as we rolled slowly down Nordhusvej. ‘Unmade roads get you extra points.’
‘Why’s that?’ said Diana.
‘Everything original is high status. The old families have houses either here or on the side lanes leading down to the water. The town itself has become too vulgar. The finer people live out in Lundene and decline to venture out among the masses.’
‘Oh, do they indeed?’ said Søren. Diana chuckled with him and it was good the two of them could have a laugh together, but I found the occasion disturbing. It had been a long time since I’d been made to feel snobbish. I looked at Søren and feared that derisive smile of his, but all he did was smooth his hand over my hair soothingly.
Mille was conspicuously casual. Open shirt over a little bikini, tummy flab on free display. Her thighs had become rather round and her arse would be a mouthful. On the other hand, she now had boobs.
Nikolaj Krogh was in checked shorts and a closely knit navy blue polo with no logo patch. He had pulled up the collar, which could only have been by mistake.
It was an exceptional summer house. The main building was classic two-storey, but behind it a whole world emerged. The property was huge, about a hectare in all, and seemed to emanate from an enormous oak tree. All the fruit trees were represented, as well as raspberry bushes, a neat vegetable garden with all sorts of lettuce, potatoes, carrots, beans, courgettes and a myriad of herbs, from classic Mediterranean such as oregano, thyme, marjoram and sage to the more rare: three varieties of mint, lovage and red basil. Sun-bleached hammocks, a big campfire place. No trampoline, certainly not.
Four spacious, black-painted wooden cabins stood at the far end of the garden, each bearing the name of a late figure of Danish arts on little brass plates: Lean Nielsen, William Skotte Olsen, Dan Turèll and F.P. Jac.
‘My parents always had people staying,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘Lean Nielsen once bit my mother on the cheek.’
Mille had put us up in Skotte Olsen, and I told Diana that he had been a painter and a bohemian, and that his paintings were always either blurred faces in front of urban buildings or floating fish. He found his style and flogged it to the death.
Nikolaj Krogh grilled scampi and Mille put on a denim teepee and revealed her soulless approach to cooking.
A couple of years before, her repertoire had consisted only of Caesar salad and Swedish stew, but a downward-spiralling career and peer pressure exerted by the mothers of Taarbæk had given her delusions. The lettuce was freshly picked and delicately arranged in a faience bowl, but the dressing told all. It lacked zest and inspiration.
‘What’s your book about?’ she asked.
‘It’s about the demise of coupledom and Søren’s life at Floss,’ I said.
‘I was actually one of the thirty people who saw the Sex Pistols at Daddy’s Dance Hall,’ said Nikolaj Krogh, sounding out with a glance whether he had permission to go into detail.
‘Not again, Nikolaj,’ Mille said. ‘You know how sick I am of hearing about that bloody concert.’
‘Yes, sorry, I think I probably have mentioned it before.’
‘Mention’s not the word,’ said Mille. ‘Mikkel’s heard it before, as well.’
It was true. The disastrous dinner in Taarbæk.
‘Apologies,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘In a way I still live on the energy from back then. Punk really was a revolution.’
‘Punk was an unarticulated scream,’ said Mille.
‘It democratised creativity,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.
‘Thirty years from now punk will be remembered only for its hairstyles,’ she said.
Nikolaj Krogh’s cheeks sank.
‘Name one thing punk ever did,’ said Mille.
‘DIY! Its whole approach to art,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘All of a sudden you could just do it, without qualifications, there was no longer any precondition. It’s still the way I work.’
‘So you’re without qualifications now, are you? You grew up surrounded by beautiful things and were spoon-fed qualifications from day one. It’s hardly an accident you ended up working with aesthetics.’
Nikolaj Krogh leaned back in his bamboo chair. The air may have been alive with birdsong, but that just wasn’t much use to any of us.
We all went down to the beach to swim in the evening, except for Nikolaj Krogh, who stayed behind to wash up.
‘I used to have a body like that,’ said Mille, as she watched Diana undressing. ‘Well, actually, my boobs were never that good, and just look at this flab!’
Søren and I sat clutching our beers.
‘What about we get our interview done after breakfast?’ I said.
He didn’t see the need to answer.
‘I was afraid it was going to be all latte-farty and stuck-up here,’ he said. ‘But everyone’s really nice.’
Mille and Diana tumbled about with the kids in the waves.
‘Do you think they like me?’
‘Definitely!’
‘When exactly do you think they began to like me?’
‘Don’t get started, Søren.’
‘Personally, I think it was about halfway through dinner, but no doubt you’ll have your own idea about that,’ he said.
‘I told them you’re a drug addict and advised them to hold on to their hats, seeing as how you don’t know the difference between what’s yours and what isn’t.’
Søren put his hands on his hips.
‘That’s funny! Nikolaj Krogh told me they were going to take down Lean Nielsen and put a shiny new Søren T-shirt plaque up instead.’
I felt an obligation to introduce Søren and Diana to the Bio Bistro. I gave them the bare bones on the way: steak, red wine and pipe-smoking in the seventies, tittle-tattle in the eighties and clubhouse for the creative class since the nineties. The dew of evening brought forth aroma, honeysuckle especially, making a mockery of my rigmarole.
Diana dazzled in her sand-coloured Bottega Veneta suit. Søren looked like a fag-smoking troll, and you don’t see many of them about these days. We were shown to a table in the corner and had just started on the white wine when a speckless girl from the sunny side of Copenhagen put her hand on my shoulder. She was drunk, as her type always are as soon as they put their law textbooks down.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, rather sheepishly. ‘It’s just that I read the interview with the two of you, and it inspired me to dump my boyfriend. We were together for five years and he was a seriously good catch!’
‘Why did you dump him?’ Diana asked.
‘Can I have a glass of wine?’
She downed a glass in one and poured herself another.
‘I’ve never been with a girl,’ she said.
‘Do you want to?’ said Diana.
‘I’ve got a good body.’
She got to her feet and ran her hands over her curves.
‘Xander doesn’t think my boobs are big enough.’
She squeezed them together under her little top and sized us up without blushing.
‘Is he going home with you?’ she said, with a nod towards Søren T-shirt. ‘You’re quite a cool couple, but he’s wasted. What do you want him for? Why don’t you take me home instead?’
‘We only go to bed with trolls,’ I said.
‘Don’t say that!’ she said. ‘Xander’s always calling me his little troll. Who the hell wants to be called that? He just bought us a house on Phistersvej. I don’t suppose you’ll know it. Aren’t you from Vesterbro?’
‘If you haven’t got any coke you can share with us, get lost,’ said Søren.
The DJ put ‘Hot in Here’ on a
nd our friend knocked her glass over in her rush to get back to the dance floor.
‘Since when were you so famous?’ Søren said. I told him about the interview in Berlingske Tidende and furnished him with a simplified version of my views on coupledom.
‘So you’re going out with the world’s most gorgeous woman, and yet you’re talking about getting your end away with others instead. What’s the matter with you?’
‘We’re not a couple,’ I said.
‘What the fuck are you, then?’ said Søren. ‘You snog and shag and go on holiday together. Of course you’re a couple!’
‘We’re trying to do it differently, in a new way,’ I said.
‘What’s wrong with the old way? You meet a gorgeous woman, shag each other stupid, and then have kids. That’s just the way it is.’
‘Have you ever wondered why you’ve had so many relationships?’
‘I was a junkie, wasn’t I, you daft twat.’
‘You were bored.’
‘I thought you were writing a book about my relationship. I prefer drugs! I’m sick. I can’t cope with myself.’
He fell silent. Diana gave him a hug.
‘Why the hell did we have to go and talk about that?’ he said. His little piggy eyes were moist.
‘Do you fancy dipping into the lucky bag, gorgeous?’ he asked Diana, producing a pouch from his inside pocket. Pills of all shapes, sizes and colours. Diana picked one out.
‘Excellent choice!’ said Søren. ‘But only one, mind.’
Diana blinked and swallowed.
They sat huddled together with their arms around each other. I droned on about the syncopation in ‘In the Stone’ by Earth, Wind & Fire, and then went to the bar to get another bottle of white when I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Diana was struggling to keep her eyes open. Søren had slumped into one of his classic postures, chin on chest.
‘Mikkel wrote a piece about you,’ said Diana, speaking through a druggy haze. ‘He defended your right to be maladjusted.’ She was talking about a piece I wrote in Urban seven years back.
Am I Cold Page 14